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After playing Thief 2 I thought: Wouldn't it be cool to make a map of the City?
But I never did anything with that idea. When I see this, I know you have proceeded further than I ever would. What an effort! Great job!

Heh heh heh. If they don't have access to the original map (though we know they didn't adhere to it always), and they only have the TDS map to borrow fonts from ( ), then we've done the homework for them!

Yes, I'd like to believe they have more original materials, and if not, take a gander in here, if only to get a good guess.

If this is all irrelevant to them, than I sincerely hope they just give us a copy of their new map! This trilogy map of ours will continue to be an ongoing (when it's actually going) project.

I'm sorry to inform you guys that I have lost interest in the SVG map.
Maybe if/when the Ortelius gets released, I'll hopefully get my interest back.
I just thought to let you know in case someone was waiting for an update from me.

Hey, I don't know whether or not you guys already know this, or even if it matters but...

Originally Posted by Iceblade

Just replayed Soulforge, and I just noticed a few interesting tidbit that could give us some scale for the City....there are only 30 mansions in the city....this is straight from Karras's own mousey mouth.

Karras: kar1602E: Still alive, Garrett? Thou scurries about like a mouse. And for what? Why not leave this place and try to destroy each of the Servants? Oh, but there are thirty mansions, too many to infiltrate in one night? You misspend your last hours of life. 'Tis equally dignified to laze in a field and await thy death, heh.

I must say this is rather surprising information to hear stated, but it is in the canon never to be erased.

I think this idea could help with discerning the overall size of The City as I would assume that all the mansions would be around the size of Ramirez or Bafford's and would be somewhat singular locations amid regular houses. What do y'all think?

EDIT: jtr pointed out to me that the number is just referring to those who were given servants, but this still should help for mapping as they were positioned in such a way as to engulf the entire city and spread into the lands beyond with little overlap. So here's to it!

Last edited by Stath MIA; 19th May 2009 at 01:32.
Reason: jtr7 knows waaaay more than me

Good find, although it's hard to estimate the true number of higher-class mansions since not all of them will have a Servant ("No no no Sheriff, this one has a capital S."). Plus, for such a big City (for style rather than for realism's sake) thirty mansions would be quite few. Exclusive residential areas could also be there with a higher concentration of them.

Checking the latest herewego map, I think with thirty mansions it could get quite crowded (even on the east bank), with more we'd be forced to expand the City if we assume that every estate is as big as Bafford's ugly yellow box.

The lighthouse of Markham's Isle needs to be almost aligned with Angelwatch itself, to the south (of course). Although we know it was for dealing with design limitations, the cut through the rock wall, with the drop to the sea and boulders below, is a narrow slot and the light needs to pass at a straight enough angle to be seen unhindered by solids at Angelwatch.

Um, I just completed The Haunted Cathedral in TDP and compared the latest version of the map with the map on the table of the keeper compound. The layout of the city is completely different. For example, on the THC map, Hightown and Downtown are on opposite sides of the river.

Even then, the layout of the quarters can not be correct. If you look at Hightown, Downtown and the Old Quarter on the ingame map clockwise, they appear in the order

* Old Quarter
* Downtown
* Hightown

On the latest version of the map here they appear in the order

* Downtown
* Old Quarter
* Hightown

So their relative order is reversed.

Also, newmarket and the lost city seem to be out of place. Furthermore the THC map marks the location of the mission Undercover, several brances of the river and most prominently old city walls. All of this is not on the latest version of the map.

The only other map to provide any substantial information is the Talisman map from Dark Project’s Haunted Cathedral. On it, we can see another set of relationships between districts: New Market is shown to the southwest of Old Quarter, Hightowne to the west, and Downtowne to the south.

That "River" is not "THE River", and in fact, in Assassins!, you see the channeled river for yourself in-game. Keep in mind that Talisman map is over 50 years old and The City has changed. Nothing much lines up with it, and that water is certainly not what Randy referred to as a "big friggin' river." But yeah, it's caused a lot of confusion.

Could you explain that more since we aren't sure we're getting your meaning?

TDS really threw a wrench into the works, as well, and now makes up the borders of the current iteration.

(Note that the Artifact placement is incorrect from the game itself. The Paw should be on the coast, and the Chalice is nowhere near Ft.Ironwood, let alone it's Catacombs. The dot in the center of Old Quarter should've been where the Chalice was placed.) Look past the Final Glyph and District lines and see all the tributaries flowing to the big friggin' River.

Just to keep others aware of the discussion:

It should be noted that the devs did not adhere to their own working map from game to game. Consider it gerrymandering by the City Council's Inner Circle. They do have elected officials, such as Truart's possibly Mechanist-influenced and otherwise questionable election. Not to mention the canon bribery of Constables and City court officials.

It is if you understand "Quarter" as an literal quarter of the city, a massive quartered section of the entire City that contains districts, and not just another local district on its own. The Old Quarter is the orange highlighted area on the fan map, and you can see the part of the OQ you're specifically talking about from that in-game map *is* NE of New Market, E of Hightowne, and N of Downtowne on the fan map. With that interpretation everything falls into place nicely and consistently across all the in-game maps. With your interpretation the City is incoherent under different maps and falls apart under its own illogic. And happily the labels themselves say that "quarters" and "districts" are different in just the way that brings sense to everything (and note there are 4 quarters). As the Sham Wow guy would say, "I don't know. It sells itself."